Decadent
by Wind-in-the-Sage
Summary: Not everything got on Hogan's nerves. In fact, most things would just roll off his back. He could *even* stand Klink's violin. But there was just something about this...


A/N: This story is based on the time between two episodes it may be helpful to have watched beforehand. As it gives away a bit of the story, I will only tell you the second episode. The Reluctant Target (S2E30). The first episode, if you haven't figured it out by the end, I will name then.

* * *

Not everything got on his nerves. In fact, most things would just roll off his back. It was sort of an unspoken requirement for command. Even Newkirk's endless kleptomania and Carter's constant stories were never really a problem. He could even stand most annoyances when he was stressed and underslept.

And it wasn't that he hated music. He loved his drums. He could even, _even_ , stand Klink's violin and Shultz's singing. But there was just something about this...

~~HH~~

1 Month Earlier

Kinch, awaiting a call from the Underground, patiently straightened up his stacks of papers. While he waited, he thought he could tinker with the new radio parts in the shipment they'd just gotten in. He had a plan for an attachment that would clear up his signal, and was rather excited. It was always good to understand very clearly what came over the radio. He pulled out a few boxes and laid everything on the desk. Very quickly, he found he had gotten himself in a little too deep. He simply didn't have enough hands.

A song came down the passageway, followed by the person humming it. LeBeau.

"Hey, LeBeau."

He passed the doorway.

"LeBeau!" Kinch called, louder.

His head came back around the corner. "Hmm?"

"Could you help me out?"

"Help you? I will help you with anything! You want to learn how to make souffle? Done. You want to go to the moon? I will help you with that too."

Kinch looked at LeBeau with equal parts worry and confusion. "...Could you hold this?"

"Oui!" LeBeau came over and held his hand out. Kinch handed him a part, then bent back over his work and screwed a wire between two plates, holding them in place with one hand and reaching out for LeBeau's part with the other. Four seconds later, he looked up at LeBeau, who was staring with big, soulful eyes at the corner of the room. Kinch glanced in that direction and saw nothing but two supports jammed together in the corner. He cleared his throat.

LeBeau turned his eyes to Kinch, and, realizing he wanted the part in his hand, gave it over. Kinch cast around for his next piece, and found there were fewer left than he'd suspected. He could handle it from here.

"Thanks, LeBeau."

LeBeau didn't move.

"LeBeau?"

"Yes?"

"I've got it from here. You can go now."

"Oh. Okay." And he drifted down the passage.

~~HH~~

Carter sniffed appreciatively over LeBeau's stewpot. "Sure smells good!" he said. LeBeau smiled. The rest of the barracks cringed. Carter needed to learn from his mistakes. They all waited in various states of worry, anticipation, or awe. "Gotta be the best potato soup I've ever seen."

You could feel the tension in the air.

"Thank you, Carter." LeBeau hummed another line. "But it's not actually potato soup, you know. It's much better. It's my grandmere's recipe for vichyssoise."

Those who had chosen "awe" were closest, but they were not in awe at Carter's bravery. It was LeBeau's calm, forgiving, reasonable attitude about poor judgement of food. This day may very well go down in camp history.

Carter escaped unscathed (except by Newkirk's standards, who considered a culinary lesson to be harsh punishment), and even he found himself thinking there was something a little off.

~~HH~~

Newkirk stared at his plate. He stared some more. He picked up his fork, and lifted the helping of food. He dropped it back to the plate. He looked at Kinch, who was looking at him. He looked at LeBeau, who was not.

"Cor blimey," he breathed. "It's terminal."

~~HH~~

They made a decision.

~~HH~~

Hogan heard a knock on his door. "Come in."

Three of his men filed into his office, quietly, one by one. Kinch, then Newkirk, then Carter. They looked at each other, no one making eye contact with Hogan. Kinch finally spoke. "We wanted to raise an official concern."

Hogan raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" He wasn't sure where this was going.

After another pause, Newkirk said, "We're worried about LeBeau."

"LeBeau?" he asked.

"Well, since you came back from your mission, 'e 'asn't... been right in the 'ead."

"Yeah!" Carter put in. "He's just so... not there."

"I mean, did he get hit in the head, or something...?" wondered Kinch.

"What happened?"

Hogan put a hand to his face. He knew what this was about. "It's nothing," he assured them.

"Nothing?" Kinch sounded skeptical.

"It's most definitely somethin'," ascertained Newkirk. "You saw dinner, didn't you?"

"It'll go away. Don't worry, it won't affect the operation." No one heard him mutter under his breath, "I hope."

One week later, only Carter still believed that sentiment.

~~HH~~

Then, after much more worry, confusion, and consternation on the parts of all but LeBeau, the singing started. It started gradually. And it was all in French. It was always a different song, too. He sang while he was cooking, he sang while walking the compound, he sang during roll call, and he very nearly sang on missions. That is— once Hogan allowed him back on them again. He was just a little too unaware during that first week or two to be deemed safe.

Kinch was the only one in Barracks 2 who could understand the words. No one could tell if this bothered him or not, but what did bother him was that eventually, every man in the barracks asked him what LeBeau was singing now. At first, he gave them the translations they asked for. Not that it was more than meaningless imagery. Occasionally, he refused to translate, and eventually it wore down into a brief description, or a "Does it matter?" What puzzled Kinch was that the most frequent questioner was Colonel Hogan himself. It was weird, that's for sure. And it might have been amusing if it weren't so weird. He ended up deciding that Hogan just didn't like not knowing things. Yeah. That was probably it.

But then there were the times Kinch had walked into his office with a message and found his colonel just sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, or his more and more frequent games of chess with the kommandant that got him out of the barracks for hours at a time if he could help it—which seemed to coincide with LeBeau's particularly musical bouts of euphoria.

But no one could complain too awful much. His voice wasn't bad—in fact, it was quite good—and after he started singing, he made his way back to normal. Except for the songs, of course. He noticed things, talked to everybody, played cards, got mad at Carter, and cooked his meals to perfection once more. And most of the men were okay with that. Except for two.

Newkirk was a born complainer. After three weeks, and not one repeated song (which frankly amazed Newkirk), he decided the best way to solve the mystery was to bring the problem directly to the cause.

On a bright afternoon, he discovered LeBeau sitting with the German Shepherds. Correction: singing to the German Shepherds. This one was a more carefree, soft little ditty. That may also have been because prisoners weren't allowed to befriend the dogs, and he was trying to avoid detection. Newkirk cornered him.

"Oi, LeBeau."

"Oui?" he asked, looking up at his friend.

Newkirk squatted beside him. "I wanted to ask you a question."

"Sure." LeBeau paid more attention now. Newkirk didn't usually have questions. He had answers.

"I want to know, why do you keep singin' so much?"

LeBeau crinkled his brow, trying to remember singing recently. A surprising number of examples flooded his brain.

"It's just, why're you so happy? I assume that's why you're singin' and none o' the rest of us are."

LeBeau cocked his head and looked at him with a faintly confused expression. Then it cleared. "Oh, that's right," he said, and his voice became a tiny bit lighter. "You didn't see her eyes."

Oh. Her. Suddenly, Newkirk remembered meeting the Colonel when Klink's staffcar rolled into camp after the mission. As soon as he'd jumped down from the luggage on top, the Colonel had said, "Carter? Thank you for being you."

In all of what is good and wonderful, a bird! Why hadn't he seen it earlier? ...Maybe because there weren't many birds around here, and when they did come across one, LeBeau had never acted quite like this. It was at times like this when he realized he had only known the others for two years, even though it felt like so much longer. But no matter. He had a very interesting bit of gossip that needed let out right now. He ran—casually strolled towards the barracks.

Before he could share his intel with his friends and, subsequently, the entire camp, Carter leaned out of Hogan's quarters and gestured him inside. Kinch was just putting away the coffeepot as he got in. "Now there's an opportunity," he remarked.

"What is it, guv?" Newkirk asked Hogan.

Hogan glanced over to make sure Carter had closed the door and explained their next assignment.

~~HH~~

And two days later, they were dealing with a disgruntled lieutenant's wife, from whom they thought they could covertly get some information about her husband's current munitions assignment, and, well, it hadn't been quite as covert as they thought it would be. Carter was the only one they could get to her, disguised as the housekeeper (a little arrangement Hogan had organized with not quite his usual measure of foresight the previous day), because she had a strange fear of the prisoners. Her husband had only convinced her to come because it was the only stop on the route they were forced to take due to saboteurs blowing the bridge on their planned route, courtesy of said housekeeper. She stayed in her quarters the entire time, and the lieutenant was flat out too quiet a man for Hogan to get anything out of, try though he might. He quit before the man started to become as suspicious as his wife.

And so, Carter was not having an easy time of it. He did not understand either women or subtlety. In order to avoid talking about home or being a prisoner, he ended up rambling about the service at the local taverns, bridges being out, and unexpected visits to camp by German officials, before Hogan could get him out of there, every subject being a tad too close to that of their operation for comfort.

Running out of options, Hogan had been grateful when, while handing Carter off to Newkirk to usher quietly back to the barracks, he was reminded that LeBeau was still in the kitchen cleaning up dinner. He rushed to the back door and got LeBeau's attention.

"Psst!"

LeBeau continued to hum as he clattered around dishes. Hogan looked around, stepped inside, and tapped him on the shoulder.

LeBeau whipped around and Hogan jumped back from the huge chef's knife he was holding. "Oh! Mon Colonel! Um, sorry."

"Yeah—that's okay." Hogan took a breath and put his brain back on track. "Look. I need you to whip up some dessert or something as an excuse to get into Frau Gober's quarters. You heard Carter's briefing earlier?"

LeBeau nodded.

"Plan B: You're taking his place."

~~HH~~

Hogan, hiding in the bushes below the window and waiting to see if he could be of any help, was still recovering from the heart attack Carter nearly gave him with his rambling, and the second one LeBeau had nearly given him with that knife, when he tensed up. Oh no. Please, no.

LeBeau was hardly five bars into his song when she gasped. Hogan was prepared to abort the mission. "Oh! I love it!" she exclaimed. Halfway to standing up, he crouched back down again.

"You do?" LeBeau asked.

"Oh yes. Keep going!"

LeBeau eagerly complied. Four songs and three glasses of wine later, judging by the clinking sounds he'd heard, she was ready to tell him anything, and Hogan was simultaneously thanking his lucky stars and cursing his unlucky ones. He assumed both must exist. Yes, they were getting the information they wanted, but it was at a high price. He was forced to sit and listen to _more_ of LeBeau's songs. They had been so constant for the last month, he was about to dismiss LeBeau from either the French army or the American army, whichever he could manage. He just could not continue his job like this. But he held his tongue and suffered through, telling himself it would all be worth it when they got their information to London.

It was. The lieutenant and his wife were on their way the next day as were the coordinates of a well-camouflaged munitions factory to their west. No one even got any cooler time. And it was a good thing too. The next day, a spy came to camp, and before they knew it, Hogan had convinced Klink an assassin was after him, traded places with him, and was anticipating the arrival of three generals at camp discussing battle plans.

LeBeau was playing a part in the kommandant's quarters again. Shultz was posted outside of the kommandantur while Hogan waited inside. LeBeau peeked around Shultz's great girth towards the gate. It took a moment, then Shultz noticed him.

"Cockroach!" he exclaimed in surprise. "What are you doing?"

"Same as you."

"Same as me? What? You are guarding the kommandant?"

"No, no. I'm watching for those generals."

"Generals? You are not supposed to know that LeBeau!" He started batting at LeBeau to get him to leave, and maybe go back to the barracks where he belonged. He should have learned by now that that kind of thinking was wishful at best. LeBeau clung on, refusing to leave his hiding place.

"Look! Here they are!"

Shultz started and looked at the gate. Sure enough, here came the staffcar. He heard the door slam and turned around. LeBeau had disappeared.

"Oh, LeBeau, you are not supposed to be in there!" he murmured to himself, standing at attention as the car came through the gates.

~~HH~~

LeBeau stood in front of Kommandant Hogan. Acting was strange. Especially improv, which is usually what they did, never knowing what they'd need to say next. They waited in silence, looking at each other and waiting for the door to open behind LeBeau. Doors slamming, boots stamping, Shultz groveling, and the door opened. LeBeau stood straight up to attention.

"And by the way. Don't let me hear any more of those decadent French love songs!" Hogan yelled at him.

"Yes, sir!" He hurried between the generals and out the door as fast as he could under the guise of getting out of the presence of such a fearsome camp director, but in actuality he was trying to get out of sight before a smile cracked his countenance. He got out the door, and headed straight back to barracks, ready to get to his post at the short-wave. He barely got the smirk under control as he got inside the barracks. Newkirk noticed.

"What?"

LeBeau didn't trust himself to speak just yet.

"What is it?" he repeated.

LeBeau waved him off. "Nothing. We've got to get to the radio."

Newkirk rolled his eyes and let it go. The next several tense minutes made him forget all about it.

~~HH~~

The mission was a success. London got the coordinates and the generals got out of camp, but it would take Hogan several days to convince Klink that his life was no longer in danger and be able to return his clothing and position.

As soon as the staffcar left and Kinch started wrapping up their report, LeBeau climbed the ladder into the barracks and made for the kommandantur to meet Hogan.

He found him in Klink's office, leaning back in Klink's chair, with one Klink's cigars in his mouth, a look of worry on his face.

"You got it all?" he asked when he saw LeBeau.

LeBeau nodded. "London got it."

Hogan took Klink's boots off Klink's desk and stood up with a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness."

LeBeau needed to know. "Was it that bad?" he asked.

Hogan gave him that Hogan look, walked over with Klink's stilted walk, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"It was that bad."

* * *

A/N: The episode this story is set after would be A Tiger Hunt in Paris (S2E10-11) where first we meet the glamorous, fabulous, flamboyant, infuriating-as-ever Russian spy Marya.


End file.
